Undone by the Sultan's Touch

And she knew enough Arabic to understand that the man on the other side of the door was part of Khaled’s security detail, who, she was suddenly certain, had indeed been circling her earlier, just as she’d imagined.

“Bad American action movies?” she asked him.

Khaled shot her a look over his shoulder and didn’t quite smile, though his eyes gleamed. “I would never have you thrown into one of the SUVs, Cleo. I would escort you into one, like a gentleman.”

Cleo was smiling as Khaled let his guard inside, and she stood where she was in the living room as the two men spoke in a quick, intense undertone. Then the other man exited and Khaled stood there for a moment. His head tipped forward and he let out a breath that was much too close to a sigh, and Cleo felt gripped by something fierce. Something with sharp, deep talons that made her wonder that she’d been smiling only moments before.

“I must return to Jhurat,” Khaled said, and when he turned to face her he was utterly expressionless.

“Has something happened?” she asked, and she wasn’t sure she recognized her own voice. Or the way her hands had become fists and hung there, hard and angry, at her sides.

“Something always happens,” Khaled replied in a short tone. “Something always will. But in this case, they think they have Talaat’s pissant band of rebels—I refuse to call them an army—pinned down in one of the villages. But the victory will look shallow and invite debate if I am not there to direct it.”

He moved as he spoke, and Cleo blinked, realizing only when he reached down to snatch his shirt from the ground that Khaled had never shared matters of state so readily before. Why was he doing it now? And why did it make her feel as if she were standing much too close to the edge of a long, hard fall?

“What if I assert the power I’m supposed to have tonight?” She watched him as she said it. His mouth twisted into something grim. He pulled his shirt on, and yet she had the sense he was waiting. “What if I demand that you stay? To delegate?”

He took a long time buttoning up that shirt, and when he was finished, he looked at her with his gray eyes like shadows.

“Don’t do this.”

“This was what we agreed.” But she was whispering.

“Cleo.” She’d never heard him sound like this. She didn’t even know how she’d categorize that rough scrape of his voice. “Do not ask me to choose between my country and my wife. I can’t win. And neither can you.”

“What if I don’t care about winning?” Her voice sounded the same, and she knew what it was then. Broken. “What if I want you to stay?”

And Khaled looked haunted. Wrecked, as surely as if she’d torn him apart with her hands. Cleo was hugging herself, her hands still in fists, but she couldn’t seem to do anything else but stand there and watch him.

He stamped his feet into his shoes, and the sound was much too loud. Shots, one after the next, and as painful.

Or maybe that was only the taut, dense silence surrounding them.

“I thought what happened upstairs—” She tried again, not even sure what she was grasping for, only aware that she had to. She had to try.

“Yes,” he said darkly. “That was an object lesson, Cleo, but not one you want to learn. As you say, I could have broken free of your restraints at any time.”

“Then why submit to it in the first place?” she demanded. “Why go to all that trouble to fake it?”

“Because you wanted me there and I didn’t want to break free,” he said, and there was a helpless kind of grief in his voice then. “But I also do not want to be the kind of man—the kind of sultan—who fails his country. I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Meaning, you will never choose me.” He didn’t argue, and she shook her head, hoping that could conceal the way the rest of her shook. “Some vows are more like curses, Khaled. You should think about that.”

“I am not cursed.” His gaze was a storm. He lifted one hand and pounded it against his chest, the blow loud and hard, though he didn’t seem to note it. “I am the Sultan of Jhurat. It is not a title to me, Cleo. It is who I am.”

“Khaled—”

But she had no idea what she was saying, or when her tears had started to fall again, and it hardly mattered anyway. He wasn’t listening. He stood there, so close and yet so remote, and his gaze burned through her until she was nothing but cinders and the salt of her own tears.